What is affiliate marketing and why you should take note (part1)

Ever seen videos of people claiming they make ‘a million a day posting a few ads’? If so, then you’ve come into contact with affiliate marketing. Sure, affiliate marketing is not particularly likely to make you that much money unless you’re an absolute pro, and as a general rule, it will involve a lot more work than ‘posting a few ads a day’ – particularly to begin with!But despite all this, there is truth in the claim that you can earn an awful lot of money doing very little with affiliate marketing. In fact, affiliate marketing is really the only legitimate tool you have to accomplish this kind of lifestyle. Affiliate marketing is simply the very easiest way to get set up with a money-generating business model that provides passive income and that doesn’t see you exchanging time for money.

In other words, whereas working in an office requires you to slave away at a desk in order for you to get paid by the hour; affiliate marketing is something that lets you earn cash while you’re asleep. You need to be smart setting it up but once you’ve done that successfully it will be automated; all that’s left for you to do is to handle a little maintenance. Does this mean you should sign up to one of those ads on Facebook? Heck no! Whenever you see an ad like this, what you’ve always got to question is: what’s in it for them? If they’re offering to help you earn money online so easily, you need to wonder why they need you at all. Most likely, they’re recruiting people like you to act as ‘grunts’ meaning that you’ll promote their offers and they’ll ‘share the revenue’ with you. This is obviously not the most efficient way to make money online and you shouldn’t touch it with a barge pole! The other possibility is that they’re going to sell you a very expensive course or make you sign up to some kind of expensive program – either of which will benefit you far less than it will benefit them.

The earliest warning sign with programs like this should always be the lack of information. ‘Make money posting a few ads a day’ is very vague and it’s a rather big promise. There’s no explanation up-front as to how this would work and no mention of the word ‘affiliate marketing’.In this scenario, those people selling the courses and programs have the advantage of information over you. A much better strategy then is to simply learn the basics of affiliate marketing yourself so that you can create your own business model to suit you. All you need to know is what affiliate marketing is, how it works and what the best techniques are for ensuring your success.